Pitch control in esophageal and tracheoesophageal speech of Cantonese

Objective: Previous studies of English-speaking esophageal (SE) and tracheoesophageal (TE) speakers revealed a significantly lower voice fundamental frequency (F0) than normal laryngeal (NL) speakers. Studies of SE and TE speakers of a tone language, however, indicated discrepant findings. Tonal SE and TE speakers could produce comparable or even higher F0 than NL speakers. The present study examined the F0 characteristics associated with speech and nonspeech tasks produced by Cantonese SE and TE speakers.

Subjects and methods: Speech produced by 15 superior SE, 15 superior TE and 15 NL speakers was recorded while each was reading a short passage and performing a pitch scaling task. F0 values were calculated from the speech samples.

Results: SE speakers had higher average F0 in reading tasks than TE and NL speakers, while the NL speakers exhibited the highest average F0 values followed by SE and TE speakers during pitch scaling. In addition, pitch scaling (nonspeech) tasks were associated with higher average F0 than passage reading tasks regardless of speaker type.

Conclusion: The findings point to the fact that, despite the use of the new sound source, SE and TE speakers were still able to change F0 for specific speech tasks.